View from the front line where scars run deep

JOHN Mann tells a terrific story of a day on the campaign trail during his bid to become the new MP for Bassetlaw in 2001.
1984: Anti-riot squad police watching as pickets face them against a background of burning cars at the Orgreave coke works, Yorkshire.1984: Anti-riot squad police watching as pickets face them against a background of burning cars at the Orgreave coke works, Yorkshire.
1984: Anti-riot squad police watching as pickets face them against a background of burning cars at the Orgreave coke works, Yorkshire.

“Someone pointed out two people to me walking on the other side of the road – two elderly people, brothers,” he recalls. “They told me they hadn’t spoken since the miners’ strike.

“I said wow – that’s quite a while. They said no, not 84-85. They’d not spoken since the 1936 strike.”

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In Mr Mann’s constituency, spread across the South Yorkshire-Nottinghamshire border, the scars of industrial action run deep. In the 1980s, he says, Bassetlaw was the “frontline”, with neighbouring pits taking opposing stances on the strike depending upon their controlling unions.

1984: Anti-riot squad police watching as pickets face them against a background of burning cars at the Orgreave coke works, Yorkshire.1984: Anti-riot squad police watching as pickets face them against a background of burning cars at the Orgreave coke works, Yorkshire.
1984: Anti-riot squad police watching as pickets face them against a background of burning cars at the Orgreave coke works, Yorkshire.

“It seems a long era ago to people these days – but not to those who were involved,” he says. “And of course, the communities still haven’t fully recovered.”

Having served Bassetlaw for more than a decade, Mr Mann is all too aware of the bitterness people still feel.

“Some of the anger in Bassetlaw was particularly directed at farmers who trashed their spare crops rather than hand them out,” he says. “I think some of the most bitter memories are about that. Because that was just calculated.

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“And obviously against those who chose to go back to work; who argued to go back. They were very small in number, but there is a lot of bitterness towards them.”

John Mann MPJohn Mann MP
John Mann MP

The MP, who grew up in West Yorkshire, spent much of the strike working for the Labour Party, fund-raising on behalf of the striking miners and their families.

“These days if someone goes on strike for a day, it’s seen as a big deal,” he reflects. “These people were on strike for a year. And of course if they’re on strike, they’re not getting paid.”

In the end, he believes, people were “starved back to work”.

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“There were a handful that went back joyously – but the majority went back because their kids were not getting properly fed,” he says.

“They were borrowing money from loan sharks; getting into more and more debt. And of course vast numbers didn’t go back – they stayed on strike until the end.”

Astonishingly, Mr Mann claimed earlier this year that his phone had been tapped by security services while he was carrying out his fund-raising work. He wants his party leader, Ed Miliband, to pledge to release all documents relating to the strike should he win the next election, describing his treatment as ‘un-British’.

“The truth should come out,” he says. “All the documents should be released. You had bystanders like me having their phones tapped, put on the economic league blacklist.

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“The treatment of some people was un-British. It’s not the way we do things in this country. And if it’s embarrassing for a few former politicians, then good – they should be embarrassed.”

It’s clear he has one particular politician in mind. The Labour Left-winger says Margaret Thatcher has never been forgiven in parts of the North for the “unnecessary” way she approached the dispute.

“It was a pyrrhic victory,” he says of the conflict. “An industry that was going to decline was shut brutally and quickly, without the communities having the chance to adapt to new jobs.

“Now at Manton Colliery site we’ve got far more jobs on site than there were before. We will have at Harworth, eventually. But that wasn’t planned in. It was done retrospectively.”

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He cites as an example what he says was his very first act as a new MP in 2001, helping to resolve a long-standing dispute over water at Manton Colliery which allowed it to at last be redeveloped.

“Those kinds of things should have been done in advance – phased closures, redevelopments alongside,” he says. “Planning a 10-year programme where you develop other industries. That’s the rational way to do it.”

But Mrs Thatcher, he says, simply “wanted a political fight”. And the result, he insists, was ultimately counter-productive for her party. “People realised it was unfair, and that the way it was done was unnecessary,” he says. “And the Tories gloried in this, for years.

“Great Northern cities which traditionally had a big Conservative base – like Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow – it evaporated.”

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The impact on British society was even more severe, he says.

“The biggest absurdity is vast numbers of people, including in Bassetlaw, were put on incapacity benefit in their forties, and remained on it for 25 years.

“The taxpayer ended up paying for people who never worked again. The hidden costs of the brutal way the industry was closed down have never been quantified – but they are phenomenal.

“And the problem is you get whole generations of lots of people not working, and they have kids – this is part of the problem of welfare dependency. The discipline of work the mining industry created vanished overnight.”

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Mr Mann paints a positive picture, however, of the way his local area has fought back.

“It’s only because of the resilience of the people in the communities that the communities have survived,” he says.

“One of the most remarkable things is that there hasn’t been more social unrest within those communities. All the problems of unemployment, of drugs and crime, have crept in and been beaten back.”

But the process, he adds, has been deeply painful.

“In my first year as MP, 12 people died in Bassetlaw from drugs. That is an unnecessary waste of people’s lives. That simply wouldn’t have happened without the way the mining communities were treated.

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“Lives were ruined. And some of the problems we have in society today, some of the low aspiration, that’s part and parcel of the same thing. It is that loss of creativity, that loss for people of living within vibrant communities – that is the great sadness I have.”